The Halo Effect: What Happens When You Turn Off Paid Media (And Why You Might Not Recover)

A 150+ location fast casual restaurant chain spending $1.1 million annually on paid ads decided to go completely dark. Within just five weeks, the ripple effects hit every single marketing channel — organic, social, email, branded search, and direct traffic all took a hit. Revenue dropped $182,000. And when they tried to recover? They needed 48% more budget just to get back to baseline.